Page 6

6.

When I got to Cherie’s, Zach was playing with a lump of putty-colored gunk in a large metal bowl. I didn’t bother greeting him, because he never responded. Stella sat at the other end of the dining table, glued to Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation .

Cherie made coffee for herself and tea for me and carried the mugs into her breakfast nook, where the kids couldn’t hear us talk if we spoke in low voices. We both agreed that we were dreading tomorrow, the first day of school. I told Cherie about yesterday’s dead-bird incident, and she laughed and then said, “Neurotypicals can’t understand kids like ours.”

I burned my tongue on the tea. “Kids like ours?” Stella had her obsessions, but unlike Zach, she paid attention to the people around her. Zach never met anyone’s gaze, but Stella looked you straight in the eye.

Cherie placed a hand on mine. “Listen, I’ve been mulling over this a lot, and I think you should get Stella tested. I dreaded it too, but when I confirmed that Zach’s autistic, it was actually a huge relief because then I had a way forward. And you’re lucky—you’ve got the money to go private. You don’t have to worry about NHS waiting lists.”

“Stella is different,” I agreed. “But that’s not a reason to take her to a doctor.”

Cherie leaned closer. She was skinny and energetic, always dressed in exercise gear, as if parenting were one long triathlon. Usually she was like a coach, always there to say, “Great job!” and “Keep it up!” whatever I did. But not today. “Charlotte, this is coming from a place of love, but Stella has so many of the signs. The sensory processing issues. The difficulty socializing. The hyperlexia.”

“Hyper what?”

“The way she won’t stop reading. And she started talking late, didn’t she?” Cherie said, sitting back as if to rest her case.

Cherie was right that Stella had been a late talker, her first words at seventeen months. She hated the stringy bits on bananas, and her first words were “I don’t want yucky stuff on my banana.”

I felt a pressure building inside my chest. I hated it when other people thought they knew Stella better than I did. “I know that speech delay is a sign of autism. I’ve researched this. Stella does have some of the signs—who doesn’t? But she doesn’t have—”

“But girls are so good at masking,” Cherie said. Her breath hit me: coffee and watermelon gum. I pressed my hand under my nose. She saw, and her face darkened.

“I’m sorry, Cherie, I’ve got a very sensitive sense of smell right now,” I said. It wouldn’t help to explain that everyone smelled awful to me right now except Stella and Pete.

Cherie opened her mouth, but Stella rushed into the breakfast nook. “Mommy, get it off. Get it off now! It’s disgusting!” She held up a hank of hair, matted with gunk. She was trembling, her face blanched. My muscles turned rigid.

“Where are the scissors, please?” I asked Cherie, but she just stepped in front of Zach, like he was the one who’d been slimed.

“I think you should do nothing and let her have her meltdown.”

“No way.” I couldn’t handle freak-out mode right now.

“Are you OK, honey?” Cherie asked Zach, but he was focused on drawing out his slime into long, stretchy strands. Nobody seemed to think he had anything to apologize for. I remembered that Cherie kept her scissors in her junk drawer. I told her we had to go, then grabbed them and rushed out of the house with a trembling Stella in tow. But Cherie rushed after us and seized my arm as I was halfway down the front path.

“Charlotte,” she panted. “Those scissors are part of our Calming Clipper kit. We need them. Come back inside and let her scream. That’s how kids like ours release tension.”

“I just told you: Stella isn’t like Zach!” I snapped. “She’s absolutely nothing like Zach.”

At that, Cherie’s eyes bulged and she got right in my face, so close I could see the bleached down on her upper lip. I put out my hand to make her back off. Then she was sitting on her front path with a gasp that was more surprise than pain. We stared at each other: What just happened?

But the countdown to freak-out mode hadn’t stopped. I rushed Stella to the car. I was so upset that it was hard to keep my hands steady when I snipped off the offending clump of hair. I’d have to drop off the scissors later. At least Stella didn’t fuss. She was now completely calm. “Why did you push Zach’s mommy?”

“I didn’t push her. I put out my hand to stop her from intruding in my personal space,” I said. My chest felt tight. I’d only wanted to make Cherie move away, but had I pushed her?

···

At home, Stella went up to her room, and I gnawed on a rice cake over the sink. I couldn’t lose Cherie as a friend. We texted each other all the time, swapping advice about the kids, mocking the WhatsApp thread for the FOMHS, or Friends of Muswell Hill Primary School, in which type-A creative professionals—film directors and West End set designers—competitively volunteered.

Cherie was the only mom I knew well enough to have a running joke with. When Cherie was stressed about Zach, Cherie’s husband, Benjamin, had once said, “You need to take some time for yourself—get your hair done and get your eyebrows shaped.” Ever since then, when one of us felt overwhelmed, the other would humorously suggest, “Maybe you need a visit to the brow specialist.” A text wasn’t going to cut it now. I’d have to apologize properly, even if it was an accident.

Maybe I should try to be more active in FOMHS. It could help Stella socially if I knew the other kids’ parents better. In fact, the first meeting of the school year was this coming Sunday afternoon—pizza and prosecco at Emmy’s house. Emmy would, I hoped, be over the bird incident.

Meanwhile, tomorrow was the first day of school. It was a Thursday at least, so the school calendar this year meant Stella didn’t have to struggle through a full week right off the bat. But I couldn’t let her start the term with a weird haircut. I went up to her room. “Let’s even out your hair, darling.”

To my surprise, she let me brush it out and trim it. But I didn’t feel pleased that for once she was letting me touch her. I felt unsettled. Something about her smelled slightly off. It was a subtle difference, like a different laundry soap had been used to wash her clothes, even though I’d washed them myself. She smelled like someone else’s child.